The news that ABC was reviving its hit ’90s sitcom Roseanne was instantly met with controversy when it was announced last year, thanks to the titular star’s penchant for tweeting about pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Despite the negative press, however, the revival was a massive success for the network and another season was quickly greenlit.
But things all came crashing down on Tuesday after Roseanne Barr went on a racist Twitter rant that attacked Chelsea Clinton, George Soros, and Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who served as a senior adviser to Barack Obama during his presidency.
Hours after the since-deleted tweets came to light, ABC shocked Hollywood by canceling the show despite how successful it was for the network. Barr’s talent agency, ICM, also dropped her from their roster after the controversial tweets.
The Roseanne revival delivered some of the highest ratings for a new series in years, so the swift cancellation is proof of how quickly a series can come tumbling down. But the sitcom is certainly not the first to get the chop because of the questionable decisions of its stars. Here are six other series that were canceled due to controversy.
Paula’s Home Cooking
Paula Deen was the queen of cooking shows — and butter — until she admitted to using racial slurs in a court deposition. After the revelation was leaked to the media, she released an apology video and appeared in a tearful Today show interview in order to save her multi-million dollar empire, but the damage was already done. The Food Network canceled all of her upcoming TV shows and elected to not renew Deen’s contract.
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show had been off the air for decades by the time over 30 women came forward accusing Bill Cosby of drugging and raping them. But the ’80s sitcom still had reruns airing in syndication at all times of the day thanks to the popularity of the show and its star. But most stations dropped the series from their airwaves after the allegations surfaced. NBC also axed a sitcom it had in the works that would have starred Cosby and marked his return to the network. Since Cosby’s downfall first began, he was most recently found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004.
The Good Life
CeeLo Green was hired to host the second season of the TBS unscripted comedy series The Good Life in 2014 while simultaneously dealing with a lawsuit in which he pleaded no contest to a felony charge that accused him of drugging and raping a woman. The singer fueled the flames of controversy online when he later tweeted, “People who have really been raped REMEMBER.” The tweet caused an uproar and TBS decided to pull The Good Life before it even aired.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
TLC knew it had a star on their hands after featuring a sassy six-year-old named Alanna in an episode of their reality series Toddlers & Tiaras. The network offered the young beauty queen and her family their own spin-off series, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo become an unlikely cultural phenomenon. The network quickly canceled the series, though, after Alana’s mother, “Mama June” Shannon, was accused of being in a relationship with a man who had been convicted of a molesting a young relative of her family’s. Shannon took to Facebook to deny the allegations, but the damage was already done and the show never aired again.
Politically Incorrect
Bill Maher may be currently known for spouting controversial remarks on his HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher, but the comedian’s comments cost him his job on ABC’s Politically Incorrect in 2002. The cancellation stemmed from Maher publicly disagreeing with President Bush for saying the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks were cowards. The comedian said,”We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.”
7th Heaven
After 11 seasons on the air, family drama 7th Heaven was still successful enough to have reruns air on UP. But when Stephen Collins, the actor who portrayed the show’s patriarch, was accused of child molestation and eventually admitted to partaking in “inappropriate sexual conduct with three female minors,” the network pulled the show from its roster. UP brought it back two months later before deciding to remove it once again. The network’s CEO, Charley Humbard, explained he brought the show back because viewers declared that they could separate the allegations against the actor from the series itself, but ultimately discovered that was not the case.
